We are delighted to welcome author Steven Tyler to Omnimystery News today.
Steven's new murder mystery featuring amateur sleuth Luna Susan George is titled One Little Lie (February 2015 trade paperback and ebook formats). We learned a little more about the author and his book from an interview that Susan conducted with him.
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Susan: You're not the singer Steven Tyler, are you?
Tyler: (Laugh). No. But I did meet him once at a restaurant in Los Angeles. I was writing at one of the patio tables and he asked me what I was working on. He's a nice guy.
Susan: Please tell the readers how you came about creating me.
Tyler: I wrote a dozen screenplays before switching to the long form novel. All the protagonists in my literary works are women. The macho, macho man persona doesn't fit my personality. Thus, I have found writing women lead characters much easier.
Susan: One Little Lie is about an amateur detective investigating a case involving millions of dollars in stolen art. Why art theft?
Tyler: One Little Lie is actually my second book. The RTT Killer is the first. RTT is a humorous story about a serial killer. I decided to put RTT aside once it was completed before going back to do a re-write, which is presently underway. It was a desire to write a story that did not involve a murder that led me to perform research of other types of crimes. That research revealed that art theft and forgery are actually the fourth most prevalent crimes worldwide. Besides, I like art.
Susan: Would you call One Little Lie a cozy mystery?
Tyler: Cozies are usually defined as having an amateur detective, who lives in a small town, and there is no sex in the story. One Little Lie does have an amateur detective but it's set in Los Angeles. I live in L. A., it's a city of many wealthy people, and several museums with paintings by the Masters, and so it figured to be a good place to set the story. And there's only a one page where you hook-up with a guy and nothing is described in detail.
Susan: My love interest in the story, Shaunessey O'Halloran, is a detective in the LAPD Art Fraud Unit. I didn't know that the police even had a unit to deal with art crimes.
Tyler: There's an episode of the TV show Frasier where Frasier is snookered into buying a piece of fake art. Frasier's father Martin, a retired cop, tells him to call the Seattle Fine Arts Theft Unit. Frasier calls and is laughed at by the police for believing there would be such a unit. Martin has a good chuckle at his son's naiveté. Few people may know that there is actually an art fraud unit in the LAPD.
Susan: Please tell us about some of the other characters in One Little Lie.
Tyler: Part of the fun in writing is creating the characters. One Little Lie is filled with kooky characters which makes it an enjoyable, humorous read. There's Strom Cecil, the trust fund son of the art owner, Viola Cecil. Strom is a big and I mean big believer in Earthly visitations by outer space aliens. His trust fund sister Diamond is, well, shall we say, the elevator does not go to the top floor.
Susan: Diamond's elevator doesn't get off the first floor let alone go the penthouse.
Tyler: (Laugh) You said it, not me.
Susan: What about the two sixteen year old skateboarders?
Tyler: Wiggins and sidekick appear in four chapters. Originally, they were only going to appear once. Then I found a reason for you to use them a second time, two days later. To have them appear twice and then just disappear would have left the book unbalanced, so I had them re-occur in every other chapter after their initial introduction. This gave the book balance and they're really funny, to boot.
Susan: As you said, One Little Lie is filled with kooky characters. Describe some of the others, please.
Tyler: Viola Cecil herself is a loon. There's her naive personal assistant, Patricia Ashley. Two egotistical men: art dealer William Roger and veterinarian Prakash Kumar. Also, there's the cold as ice personal manager for Mrs. Cecil, Roxanne Ray and the butler, Walter Eric, who your intuition tells you is someone who is hiding something.
Susan: How did you come up with me?
Tyler: I needed a fish-out-of-water protagonist, so I made you recently divorced, which explains why there aren't any men in your life. New to the city of L.A., from Pittsburgh, which explains why you didn't have any friends, and working for your older brother who is the real private-eye.
Susan: My brother Leslie Samuel George goes away on his honeymoon when I'm mistaken for being the Shamus. How did that come about?
Tyler: The Bob Hope movie My Favorite Brunette. Hope is a baby photographer who steps into the next door office of P.I. Alan Ladd and Dorothy Lamour mistakes Hope as the detective. In One Little Lie Sam is away with his bride when Patricia comes into the office looking to hire a detective to find Mrs. Cecil's missing cat. A rare breed of cat by-the-way that is worth twenty-five thousand dollars.
Susan: Sam and I both go by our middle names and have the same initials so the misunderstanding is easy to occur.
Tyler: Exactly! I then gave you a degree in Art History to explain how you were able to determine that some, but not all, of the art hanging on Mrs. Cecil's walls is fake. That deduction leads you to investigate the phony art under the pretext of searching for the whereabouts of the missing cat.
Susan: Even the cat's name is a joke but we'll let the readers find that out for themselves when the read One Little Lie. Please tell everyone about the ending.
Tyler: I'm a film noir fan, so I used The Thin Man method of deduction where the detective gathers all the suspects in a room at the end of the story and one-by-one explains how each suspect had motive and opportunity to commit the crime before identifying the culprit.
Susan: Yeah, gee thanks for that. You don't know how nervous I was having a dozen people waiting for me to tell them who was the bad guy or gal and I didn't even know myself.
Tyler: That's part of the fun, Susan.
Susan: Am I going to be solving other crimes of missing pets and paintings?
Tyler: Not at this time although you will appear in my third book, which is partially completed.
Susan: What's that book about?
Tyler: It's the story of a ghostwriter who meets a real ghost.
Susan: Ghosts! Please no, I'm afraid of ghosts.
Tyler: Searching for My Soul will be a different undertaking for me as it dispenses with the humor my works usually provide, although there are funny moments, and concentrates on injustices that have occurred to those who are now deceased. It's Gothic Horror at its finest.
Susan: How did you come to name this book One Little Lie?
Tyler: It's your "one little lie" of pretending to be the private detective that gets you into all the trouble.
Susan: Where can our readers find out more about One Little Lie?
Tyler: There's the book website, where they can read the first two chapters for free and order the book directly so they can find out how you get yourself out of the mess you created.
Susan: You mean the mess you created for me. Is there anything you'd like to ask of our readers?
Tyler: Yes, thank you. Please read the book and provide positive reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. I need to increase my book sales to pay for the cost of independently publishing One Little Lie and the my forthcoming projects. I am sure everyone will enjoy One Little Lie.
Susan: Thank you for your time.
Tyler: No, thank you, Susan. One Little Lie is the best thing I have written and everyone who has read it shares how much they liked it. You made it all possible, Susan.
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Steven Tyler is the author of a dozen screenplays for the movie industry which are in various stages of production. One Little Lie is his second novel. He is hard at work on the third, the tale is the story of a ghostwriter who meets a real ghost.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at OneLittleLie.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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One Little Lie by Steven Tyler
A Luna Susan George Mystery
Publisher: Steven Tyler
Life was so simple for Luna Susan George on Monday. Her older brother, Sam, was away on his honeymoon, and as his only employee of "Leslie S. George, Private Investigations," Susan had the office to herself. Yes, Monday was so simple, but then came Tuesday, and that "One Little Lie."
Tuesday made Susan's life complicated when a perky twenty-something young woman wearing a pink baseball cap, with an appointment for a dental cleaning down the hall, stumbled into the office to seek a private investigator to find the missing cat of her multi-millionaire employer.
What comes next are twelve days discovering millions of dollars worth of stolen art, an assortment of oddball characters, and the involvement of the entire Los Angeles Art Fraud Unit.
— One Little Lie by Steven Tyler
